Robert Reich at Salon: Why a "trigger" for the public option is nonsense

[madfloridian]

I feel betrayed when I hear the talk from our Democrats like we have heard today. The trigger means they are putting off health care when they have a good majority. That is very upsetting.

From Robert Reich today at Salon:

GOP Sen. Snowe suggests we give private health insurers a shot at reforming themselves first. Yeah, right

Sept. 9, 2009 | I was just on the phone talking with a reporter for a national media outlet who referred to Senator Olympia Snowe's idea for a public option "trigger" as the "centrist position." Whoa. When the mainstream media start naming something "centrist" the game is almost over, because just about everyone with any authority in our nation's capital wants to be at the "center."

Let me back up a step. The public insurance option has become a lightning rod for Republicans, hate radio jocks, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page and lobbyists for the health-industrial complex who accuse the White House and Democrats of planning a "government takeover" of healthcare. Anything that has the word "public" in it is always an automatic target for their rants. But most Democrats understand that a public insurance option is essential to control healthcare costs and expand coverage -- both because private for-profit insurers now face so little competition in most markets that only the prod of a public option will force them to lower costs and extend coverage, and also because a nationwide public option would have the scale and authority to negotiate lower rates with drug companies and healthcare providers, thereby pushing private insurers to do the same.

The White House is looking for a way to be in favor of a public option but also get enough Blue Dog Democrats -- many of whom hail from swing districts and states, and therefore need some cover -- to vote for it. One such cover is a Republican senator from Maine named Olympia Snowe. If she votes for the bill, Blue Dogs can calm their constituents -- who have been worked up into a lather by the right -- by saying "You see? Even a prominent Republican senator is voting for this."

Reich continues:

What worries me isn't just that the mainstream media are calling Snowe's trigger "centrist," but that the White House might see it as an easy out. "I continue to believe that a public option within that basket of insurance choices would help improve quality and bring down costs," the president said Monday. Fine. But he hasn't yet said the public option is essential. He hasn't threatened to veto a bill lacking it. There's even reason to believe the White House has quietly encouraged Olympia Snowe to pursue her "trigger."

The best way to give Blue Dogs cover is for the president to explain clearly and boldly why the public option is essential to healthcare reform, and why he's ready to veto any bill that doesn't include it. That's also the only way to give the nation a good chance of getting true healthcare reform. Hopefully, that's what he'll do Wednesday evening.

Otherwise, we get a trigger to nowhere.

Our Democrats are refusing to use their majority to get health care reform apparently.

As a former Vermont governor said Sunday on Fox News...."use your majority or lose your majority."

[closeupready]

1. Obama is never going to draw such a forceful line in the sand.

That's not his style.

[DJ13]

3. Then Obama is no FDR

He's more like Carter.

[madfloridian]

9. This time we need someone to draw that line.

[closeupready]

12. Agree with both of you, just saying

He's compromised on almost everything else, hasn't he? This is merely yet another.

[madfloridian]

14. A little too much compromise and bipartisanship.

I agree. There is a time to fight.

[madfloridian]

2. He says Snowe option offers Blue Dogs a way out and liberal Dems a way in.

"So will Snowe play ball? It depends. Her idea (evidently encouraged by Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff) is to hold off on any public option. Give the private insurance companies a period of time -- say, five years -- within which to make changes that extend coverage to more people and also drive down long-term costs. If those goals for coverage and cost aren't met by the end of the five-year grace period, kaboom: The public option is triggered -- which will force such changes on the insurance companies.

The beauty of Snowe's proposal is that it seems to offer Blue Dogs a way out and liberal Democrats a way in. Nobody has to vote for or against a public option. The public option just happens automatically if its purposes -- wider coverage and lower costs -- aren't achieved. And the trigger idea seems so, well, centrist."

Sounds about right.

[closeupready]

13. The reason a trigger won't work is that disputes will arise as to whether the benchmarks have

been unmet at the end of the five years. The insurance industry will say we did what we had to, despite overwhelming evidence that things have only gotten worse. By that time, Dems may have lost their majority, perhaps the White House, and no reform will happen.

It is better for the insurance industry to delay action as long as possible - this is what the trigger serves to do - lengthen time available to continue lobbying, undermining support for reform.

[Mithreal]

15. The conditions for a trigger have already been met.

The for-profit health care industry has failed 116+ million Americans who are underinsured and have poorer outcomes.

[madfloridian]

4. Rather than go the route they talked about today...

it would be safer to do nothing.

[AzDar]

5. K & R

:kick:

[misanthrope]

6. The "trigger" is the ultimate empty threat...

..."Sure, we didn't do it now when we had political capital, mandate and majorities, but next time, we swear we'll do it. We promise." It sounds like the threat of a childish coward.

You don't get rid of bullies with threats and bluster. You walk up and punch them, end of story.

[madfloridian]

7. Yes, it is an empty threat.

It really upset me to hear what they were saying today.

[madfloridian]

8. delete, wrong thread

[madfloridian]

10. Here's a video of Reich talking about the public option.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w0brzIsOOQ

[Omnibus]

11. The public option *IS* the centrist position.

Single payer is the left's position.
Handouts to insurance companies is the right's.

The public option IS the compromise. No public option means NO real reform.

[spanone]

16. it is punting the issue.....they have ALREADY fucked over the people. the time is NOW

if we can't get it done now it never will be

majorities in both houses and the white house.....

[Mithreal]

18. Majorities of corporate owned, true. Not a Dem vs. Repub thing. nt

[Overseas]

17. All the Triggers of Decency have been blown off their hinges already.

The last time they defeated Democratic attempts to introduce national health insurance, the private insurers told us they could do better. They have failed miserably. The triggers for fair behavior have blown off their hinges-- millions more are uninsured and millions more are bankrupt from medical bills. Private insurers have been given decades to show us they could manage things better than the government. Enough is enough. They have definitely failed.

This summer, the private insurers have gone ahead and spent millions on very reckless professional bullying to protect their private profits. They needed to divert our national dialog from discussing the serious ways in which our cruel Pay-to-Play system is broken. They needed to be sure we wouldn't be looking carefully at the countries that pay less than we do, COVER EVERYONE, and have better outcomes than we do. They were desperate to divert us from a serious debate. So they paid millions to professional right wing PR firms to gin up dangerous fear and hatred in vulnerable populations and get them to storm town halls in terror of any reform.

I'd say professional bullying to protect private profits is blowing another trigger of decency and should not be rewarded.

Open up Medicare; Single Payer Now !!

[madfloridian]

22. Yes, we have been this route too often.

And it doesn't work...it won't work this time.

[Overseas]

23. That's why I want our Democrats to boldly declare that all the triggers have been blown.

Just come out and admit to the American people that all our decades of making things easier for the private insurers have failed. The triggers have been blown already.

[waiting for hope]

19. The standard for the "trigger" will never be reached -

thus it will never get pulled, as long as the Health Care Lobby is calling the shots. Health Care Reform is not "reform" unless there is a public option. Lawrence O'Donnell was saying on KO last night that the back lash will be intense, but I wonder, will it be strong enough to influence what happens? I doubt it, this administration has already thrown a good many people and ideas under the bus.

[Skittles]

20. trigger is beyond "nonsense" - it's a CON JOB

[droidamus2]

21. Wake up Obama

This legislation should have nothing to do with giving the 'Blue Dogs' cover. If you want to reform Health care then it has to be for the people. Sometimes to do great things you have to forget about the politics and just do it. My problem is if the country political pendulum starts swinging left but those supposedly supporting the left, the Democrats, keep kissing ass to the right wingers in their own party and compromising with the wacko right wingers in the Republican party we will never see the advances we could if they would just do what is right.

[scentopine]

24. Unfortunately Robert Reich is considered one of those on the "left"

You know the people who voted for Obama and now get zero representation or support... we are just the radical left with our insistence on justice, truth and reform.

It would be sort of funny if we weren't witness to a great transformational time from a government formed to serve its citizens to a nation of American employees and corporate citizens.

Its hard to sit back and watch so many smug democrats oblivious to this fact. Democrats are very much like the deniers of global warming - "oh, the science isn't conclusive, there's always hot days and cold days, it was 63 degrees last night - in August! so there can't be warming, no need for panic, etc etc."

Yes, there is a need for panic. We have the best chance we've had in a long time to set things right. Instead, we are driving our Prius and shopping at whole foods and pretending that it make a positive contribution.

Never forget Enron, Iraq, torture, wire tapping, wall street fraud, health insurance strip mining sick people for profit, ALL had a private industry lobbys at the core of these disasters at the cost of tens of trillions of dollars of public money for the smallest percentage of our corporate citizens.

And we still go on about how government can't do anything right and private industry is so much better.

Obama is extremely arrogant. He has not done a damn thing, not one minute of recognition and support to the core democrats who busted their asses. We are simply scolded in public for our beliefs.

Unbelievable. Its all republican all the time.

We need a real opposition party to the republicans (i.e. democratic republicans and republican republicans) who now control all three branches of government.